Lagos — The Lagos State Government has awarded the contract for the building of 13 more secondary schools, the Deputy Governor, Princess Sarah Adebisi Sosan has said.

Sosan who paid unscheduled inspection visit to some secondary schools that are being rehabilitated said the schools are to meet the increasing demand by the state's residents.

"Our enrolment has gone up by about 30 percent. That is why we are building more schools."

The schools visited were Magbon Alade Grammar School , Ibeju; Ibeju High School , Epe Girls' High School, Epe Grammar School , Odo-Obara High School , Epe and Government College , Ketu, Epe. Work done included rehabilitation of classrooms, administrative blocks, halls, as well as construction of toilets and sinking of bore holes.

The Deputy Governor, who also co-ordinates the Ministry of Education said, to improve educational facilities in the state, the government has adopted a total repair strategy, where, for every school it goes into, there should be water, toilet, classrooms, etc. The unscheduled inspection visit was therefore "to see where we had spent money, whether it had been spent judiciously and the work done."

Asked what the total cost of the project was, she said, "We do not want to quote figures that are not right (for now). The rehabilitation work is going to be aggressive. We have noted all areas of need and necessary action will be taken. All over the state, we are building, maintaining and repairing, but the maintenance culture is what we are trying to revive, henceforth", without which she said all the efforts would be in vain.

She expressed dissatisfaction with some of the work done at the Magbon Alade Grammar School saying "The windows were not properly done and the contractor will do them (again)". She was however satisfied with the level of work on the Multilingual Laboratory, under construction at Epe Grammar School, describing it as "impressive."

The laboratory is one six being constructed in each of the six Education Districts in the state. As for their purpose, Sosan later explained that, "French is compulsory, but we are trying to encourage our students and even adults the state to learn Arabic and Chinese."

The Deputy Governor further said that the state government has a new model for its schools, which will include classrooms, labs and everything that makes for a functional school. To do this, long-abandoned building and the so-called 'Jakande classrooms', tagged 'dysfunctional', are to be pulled down. According to her those structures were meant for an immediate intervention to last for about five years, but have been standing for more than 20 years. Their foundations, she said, were unlikely to be strong enough to take the additional floors of new school model.